Gloria Cooley's brother, Thomas

Received July 22:

Church family,

First and foremost, thank you for your prayers, thoughts and concern for my family. I know I spoke with many of you Sunday evening concerning my brother's health situation and so I wanted to take a few minutes to update you.

Thomas is still in the hospital and will be there at least a week. Saturday evening they inserted a port and began dialysis. He underwent a second round of dialysis on Sunday evening. Yesterday, they did not do dialysis in order to evaluate whether or not the kidney was going to begin functioning on its own again. This morning when I spoke with him he said that his kidney function had not improved and his creatinine level was not improving. They were going to run a series of tests today to determine whether or not his bladder was pushing urine back into his kidney and continue to monitor his creatinine and BUN levels. He will begin dialysis again tomorrow.

Social Services was coming to meet with him today to discuss his eligibility for disability and he was talking with the kidney specialist about the next steps if his kidney function does not improve.

All in all, we are still in the "wait and see" time frame. My mom and brother and I have all discussed the possibility and probability of permanent dialysis and transplantation.

Please continue to pray for Thomas and his wife Tammy as they navigate this scary and uncertain time.

Thank you so much for your love and support! Daniel and I are blessed to have such a terrific church family!

Blessings,
Gloria

Pray for a missionary

Mitch McCaskell is a friend of mine (Brent's). We led worship for a group of students at a missions camp in Buffalo, NY July 12-18. Getting to know Mitch was a true blessing. He is a devoted Christ follower, a gifted musician, and has given his life over to the advance of the gospel. He departs for West Africa in 3 months and I want to invite you to pray for him.

See his website HERE

Scheffer News

Trey (former youth pastor with Grace Point) and Shelly sent us an email a little while back. I (Brent) thought I had posted it, but clearly not. I am sorry. You can email them at tmerrell3@aol.com OR call me if you want a phone number.

We think and pray for you alot.

I wanted to ask you to pass on some news to the Grace Point church folks for us. Shelly and I are anticipating our first baby on December 26th! We are excited, and she is about 3 months along, and doing well so far.

Thanks for your prayers in this regard!

Grace and peace

Trey

The Commons - a church plant in Seattle

My friend Tim Corbin is starting a church called The Commons, launching in 90 days. In his latest email he requested these prayers: Pray for them often!

Prayer Needs

- Pray for Sports Camp.
Pray for all the children who will be participating and for their families.

- Pray that the families who are currently a part of our church would experience God in a life-changing way.

- Pray for the many new families and individuals we have already met this summer as a result of the block parties we have been doing.

- Pray for the men of our church. It has been easy for the women to connect but has been more difficult for the men, who are not naturally "sharers".

- Pray for the youth of our church. Our summer interns have done a great job at building a foundation for our student ministry.

- PRAISE - In the last email we we sent out, we asked that you be in prayer for deeply-rooted families to join our core group. The day after the newsletter went out, a family who we have had a relationship for many months called to let us know that they felt the Lord leading them to be a part of our church.

Lift Jessica Garza up today

Her grandmother passed away this morning. It was not sudden and it was peaceful. She is a child of God and rests perfectly in His embrace this very moment.

Remember Jessica's family and especially her grandfather who is heart broken over the loss of his wife.